Jaguar Land Rover has invested £20 million in ride-sharing platform Lyft, the rival to Uber.
Britain’s biggest carmaker will work with Lyft on driverless car technology and provide a fleet of vehicles to it.
The funding comes from JLR’s InMotion Ventures division, which was set up last year to invest in new transport technologies.
JLR’s executive director of corporate strategy Hanno Kirner said: “This is a strategic investment for both parties as we focus on innovating new mobility solutions for our customers.”
Lyft, which has concentrated on the United States as Uber targeted the worldwide taxi market, has previously been backed by American giant General Motors and Google’s autonomous car division Waymo. It is worth an estimated $7.5 billion.
Jaguar Land Rover has been testing driverless cars on a 41-mile‘living laboratory’ route on motorways and urban roads around Coventry and Solihull in the Midlands.